Thursday, June 30, 2016

The Second Age of Enlightenment

How technology,
culture and society need to find a new harmony

Remember
the Industrial Revolution? OK, maybe not
but it was in the late 18th century that the concepts of technology,
culture and society began to be inextricably linked and have remained so ever
since. The Industrial Revolution was a
time of incredible technical discovery and innovation, heralding a shift from agriculture
and artisan craftsmanship to mass production.
But it also transformed society, driving the establishment of the major
cities we know today, making old jobs redundant and creating new ones. But equally it changed culture, with the
birth of a new generation of art, literature, philosophy and the new political
ideologies of liberty, fraternity and democracy. It was during the Industrial Revolution that
we reinvented the concept of how the world works and our individual and
collective roles and responsibilities, in it.

We now
refer to the Industrial Revolution and the movements that arose from it as the
dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, one in which technology, culture and society
found a new kind of harmony.

The same
principles still apply today. For a new
technology to succeed it must of course have a practical purpose, to solve a
problem and be useful. It must serve a
cultural purpose in that it contributes to our shared ideas, language, rituals,
beliefs and behaviours. And it must serve a social purpose in that it must make
the world a better place in some way and have a benefit beyond just the
individual user.

Let’s
take the iPhone, which solved a problem we didn’t even know we had. Before iPhones we didn’t know that we’d
rather have a computer in our pockets than a telephone, but it was perfectly
obvious after the fact. Similarly, it
never occurred to us that 2D printing was a limitation until we saw the endless
possibilities of 3D.

At the
same time, the iPhone has had a profound impact on our culture and by buying an
iPhone we’re not just buying an easier way to manage our day but a personal membership
to the cult of excellence at the heart of Apple. By buying Apple, we’re displaying our badge
of belonging to the culture, which explains people’s passionate, often
irrational, devotion to the brand. The
cultural perspective also explains why we’re so interested in technology
entrepreneurs – from Elon Musk and Daniel Ek to Satya Nadella and Travis
Kalanik and love the myths and legends that surround them. The more charismatic and mysterious they are,
the more culturally powerful they become.

Similarly,
every successful new technology has an impact on society. It shapes how we
organise ourselves as social groups, how we define our place and role in
society and how we collaborate and contribute to it. It improves how we live and work, how we
connect and communicate with each other.
The advent of mobile phones gave undeveloped communities access to
education, health and financial services, the connections to establish small
businesses and, more recently, a lifeline for refugees on their perilous
journeys to safety. Take Twitter, and
the way it has created a culture of ‘everyone’s entitled to my opinions’. To many people, ‘society’ means the Twitter
community and if they want to know what the world is thinking, that’s who they
ask.

At the
same time, both culture and society drive the development and help to define
the applications, of new technology. The
best new technologies arise from our social and cultural needs, as well as our
functional requirements. Take the recent
PayPal advertising campaign: New money.
The campaign doesn’t ask us to open a PayPal account so we can pay for
things more conveniently, it’s inviting us to join a movement and show the Old
Money who’s boss now. Similarly,
products such as noise-cancelling headphones play to our sense of social
obligation as well as our individual needs and give our fellow commuters, as
well as ourselves, privacy and peace.

Disruptive
innovators such as Uber and AirBNB have arguably succeeded because they solve a
problem – in Uber’s case that of replacing the uncertainty of the meter and the
complexities of the tariff, with the certainty of a fixed fare paid via PayPal
and a driver you could plot on a map. But what Uber and other brands in the Sharing
Economy have really enabled through their technology is a new form of social
culture.

The
balance of power is more equal than in a black cab, we’re not just a passenger,
we’re an investor in a social enterprise. We like the way we’re catching a ride
with an enterprising car-owner than a slave to the Knowledge. We could be an
Uber driver or an AirBNB owner whereas we’re very unlikely ever to be a black
cab driver or a hotelier. AirBNB and Uber simply provide the platform and the
process, it’s up to all of us to provide the people.

When
Cisco refers to a digitized world of connected people and devices as the Second
Industrial Revolution, what it’s really referring to is a Second Age of
Enlightenment in which technology, culture and society are not only interlinked
but inseparable. This is an era in which
technical connectivity brings with it social and cultural connectivity and
productivity. This is an era in which the concept of a ‘digital detox’ as a way
of purifying your social and cultural soul, finding ‘ true’ intimacy and ‘real’
rituals and behavioural norms is an outdated concept. A digitized society isn’t a new world, it’s
the real world.